6 August 2022
Register for your place and Buy your Beer & Berries ticket. Kids go free.
Join University of Dundee scientists Carmen Escudero-Martinez and Senga Robertson-Albertyn in a range of activities including microscopy, root microbiology, games and crafts exploring the interactions between plants and soil microbes.
On the day Carmen and Senga will be offering an array of activities to highlight soil biodiversity and the important functions they perform for the agri-food sector. Raising awareness around the different soil organisms, beneficial functions they provide, and why it is important to conserve them in healthy soils.
Activities include:
Model a microbe: play dough shaping different microbes that live in the soil and bringing them together to make a diverse microbiome.
Root-printing in agar: taking the thin layer of soil around the roots (rhizosphere) and use it to “print” their microbes onto agar… images of the microbiome around the roots will be sent to participants once they are incubated by us back at the university. In the rhizosphere beneficial microbes for plants are very abundant and we can grow them in agar to see their diversity eg colour, shapes, size…they’re pretty cool
Microscopy: we can observe different organisms under the microscope, both live and fixed in slides.